For a lot of longtime yoga practitioners, the final frontier of yoga is learning how to practice at home. It’s not entirely clear why it’s so hard to practice alone, but there’s no doubt it’s a tremendous challenge. I certainly have a long way to go in building and maintaining a consistent home practice, but I have made some progress recently. On average now, I practice at home twice a week (and about four times at the studio). This is certainly no great accomplishment, but it’s much more than I’ve been able to do in the past.
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One thing that has aided me through this process is a new appreciation for the difference between “self practice” and “home practice”. In the past, I’ve sometimes used these terms interchangeably. However, I’ve found that making a distinction between these two notions has helped me to better understand what it is that I’m doing when I roll my yoga mat out in my living room. I’d like to articulate that distinction a bit more clearly today, with the hope that this discussion might help others who are also learning to practice yoga on their own.
To me, the defining feature of self practice is not that you’re doing yoga all by yourself; it’s really about self-direction. That is, in self-practice, a yogi makes active choices about what to do on the mat. This doesn’t have to involve an overly active mind — in fact, it probably shouldn’t — but it does place a practitioner squarely in charge of her own practice. In self practice, there is no reliance whatsoever on the immediate guidance or instruction of a teacher. In effect, self practice requires a yogi to be teacher and student all at once, simultaneously leading and following, and in a manner that is unified, coordinated, challenging, and perhaps even elegant at times. This is no easy task!
A home practice, by contrast, is a yoga session that takes place at a yogi’s home, as opposed to some other space like a yoga studio. Yes, a home practice will usually involve just one person practicing alone, but this practice is not necessarily self-directed in the way I described above.
So, to put the distinction between “self practice” and “home practice” in another way, we can say this: the term “self practice” has primarily to do with how a person practices yoga, whereas “home practice” is more about where a person practices.
Why is this distinction important? For me, it helps to clarify some of the challenges I face when I try to practice yoga by myself in my living room. Sometimes, it’s a struggle primarily because I’m feeling mentally and/or physically lazy, and I would much rather go to a class and just let the teacher tell me what to do. In other words, it’s not really a matter of practicing at home vs. the studio. What’s at issue is whether I’m prepared to direct my own practice, or whether I need someone else to tell me what to do.
When I see the challenge in this way, the prospect of practicing alone is much less daunting, because I know that practicing at home does not require me to come up with the entire routine myself. That is, I can practice at home with the assistance of some external guidance — e.g., from a yoga DVD, podcast, or CD. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of products out there that would fit the bill, and most of them are pretty cheap, about the price of a single drop-in yoga class. I’m partial to the Ashtanga Primary Series audio CD by David Swenson. Of course, it’s not quite the same as having a live teacher there, and it’s certainly not the same as having a master yogi overseeing your practice. But there’s still something comforting and reassuring about being led through the Ashtanga Primary Series by David Swenson, even if it is only his recorded voice.
I realize that a pre-recorded yoga class or routine is perhaps something of a crutch. It can be a very useful tool, though, in building up a home practice. This, in turn, can set the stage for developing a truly self-directed practice.
The idea here is not that we don’t need teachers, or that we should strive to get to a point in our yoga where we can be totally independent. However, in cultivating a genuine self practice, a practitioner can develop a new relationship with yoga, one in which the power of yoga is not some elusive magic that only a favorite teacher or celebrity yogi can unleash, but something readily accessible within each individual yoga practitioner. This fact should already be evident each time we go to class — the teacher may encourage, inspire, and instruct us, but ultimately it’s our own effort and engagement with the practice that makes it what it is.
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- Beyond Asana in 2013 (yogaisforlovers.wordpress.com)
Something different definitely takes place when you practise at home, whether it’s using CD/DVDs or making up a sequence as you go along. The biggest thing I found was I became so much more aware of my breath, and moving in harmony with its flow, rather than being forced to go at the class pace. Not only does it mean you have to do a lot more (no stopping for explanations for newbies!), but also you can get a real feel for vinyasa at your personal pace as dictated by your breath. My practice transformed when I began to roll out my mat at home, to the extent that I now feel that if you only go to classes you will never really ‘get’ yoga from the inside… So there’s going to be a lot of ‘encouragement’ for my students to practice between classes too, poor them!
Absolutely not “poor them”. “Rich them” … And for the past decade and a half, in my estimation. In my experience with highly-commercialized, mostly power and vinyasa yoga classes, looking for a primarily home practitioner friendly studio has been a little like Diogenes’ search for an honest man …
Between the bad economy and the backlash against commercialized yoga, I have high hopes for a change …
Keep going the way you’re going.
Seems like Ashtanga Vinyasa is tailor made for people to practice on their own. I don’t think pre-made sequences are a crutch at all. In fact quite the opposite. The Primary Series empowers the person to be able to practice on their own, and know what to do. I don’t know how people just make up random asana sequences. I would think it would take too much psychic energy. With the order of postures already determined, and nowhere to go but into your breath and into the pose, you are free to work towards a more meditative flow, rather than tightening at not knowing what to do next.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Andy. Your comments are a nice reminder that whether or not something is a crutch in our yoga practice can be a matter of perspective. The Ashtanga Primary Series, for the serious Ashtangi, is perhaps no more of a crutch than, say, a piece of sheet music is for a classical musician.
In fact, I have often thought of the difference between Ashtanga and vinyasa flow as being somewhat analogous to the difference between classical music and jazz. On the one hand, you have something that is highly structured and even codified. On the other hand, you have something that tends to be more free form and unpredictable.
An important point, though, is that vinyasa flow (like jazz) is not just a set of random movements. There’s actually quite a lot of thinking, planning, and coordination going on. Unless you have a pre-set flow class all mapped out, the evolution of a flow sequence is something that is largely improvised. But improvisation is not random or chaotic behavior. Usually there will be a loose structure to a flow class — often borrowed from the Ashtanga Primary Series — but within that structure, there is a lot of room for creativity and spontaneity. If you’ve ever taken a bad flow class, though, you’ll know what it feels like when the poses are really random; it feels like “grab bag” asana, where there’s no meaningful connection between the poses, and there’s no coordination of the larger sequences.
Yes, it is very difficult to practice free form vinyasa flow on your own. But tensing up or tightening, as you say, is not necessarily a part of the process. If you work on a self-directed yoga practice for awhile, one day you will eventually break out of this mode and start to create sequences in a more fluid and organic manner. This is not necessarily better or worse than practicing within a structured tradition like Ashtanga. In my own practice, I often go back and forth between Ashtanga and free form vinyasa, but my preference has always been for the latter. It introduces a whole new type of challenge, as well as new possibilities, that are just inherently missing from a yoga sequence that is entirely pre-determined.
and the regimented nature of ashtanga means it’s is great for a class environment, where home practice allows for a less yang, more empathetic practise to emerge where you can linger in poses if you can feel they are offering some deep opening, where in a class you’d be getting moved on to the next asana… a lot of people who are attracted to ashtanga because of its very demanding nature could do with a bit more yin in their practice (and lives), a bit receptivity and softness (she speaks from experience!). The best vinyasa flow always has a definite structure within which we can play spontaneously in safety, knowing that we won’t overdo one thing at the expense of another.
Ultimately it’s our own effort and engagement with the practice that makes it what it is. Totally true! Great post, thanks!
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I think home practice is very important . Doing exercises in a Yoga lesson with your friends is pleasant and fun but practicing alone is sometimes harder and you need self-discipline to that especially in regularity. Learning self-discipline can be very impotant in any Yoga stlye.